Les 5 Saisons

I hate iga and metro and all the other stores. This place has everything you’re looking for like all the cool
Cheeses I had in Paris and like 30 day old aged steaks the good stuff. Staff was friendly as well.

This may be a gorgeous gourmand-​oriented grocery store, but my experience here was less than stellar. Specifically, my two teen daughters and I came here this past summer, wanting to sit outside at the lovely outdoor terrace and have lunch and coffees at the round café tables under the cute umbrellas. You see, we visit Montréal every summer (this is my home town, after all!) and my folks live nearby, so we’ve walked on Greene many, many times and we’ve wanted to lunch here for a long time.
So on a recent hot August day, we came, jazzed to finally have lunch outside here. We stood by the tables (which were half occupied), looking for someone to ask if we should seat ourselves, or go inside, or what the protocol was. Nobody came by. We looked for a posted menu. None. (Perhaps you buy your foods inside and bring it outside yourself to your table? I still don’t know!). We saw a uniformed guy (i.e., donning a green «Les 5 Saisons» apron), purposefully walking about between the store and the outdoor dining tables, but we couldn’t catch his eye or reach him in time to ask him questions. We wandered inside the store. At a nearby counter (perhaps a cheese counter, I don’t recall), there was a female employee who I asked, are we supposed to seat ourselves outside? And, is there a menu for us to check? She looked at me as if I was from Mars. Literally! My kids looked at each other and at me, as if to say, what is going on here? The woman then proceeded to say that she didn’t speak English, so I did my best in asking her my questions in French, apologizing that I was very out of practice, that I live in the States, and I smiled and tried to get my questions across. Nope, this lady just shook her head and, in essence, dismissed us. There was no one else nearby to ask, and at this point, I was really surprised that this seemingly gentile and lovely place would be so dismissive of us and not care if we chose to get our lunch here or not.
Needless to say, we left and won’t be back.
So… perhaps the grocery store itself is wonderful, I don’t know, but its outdoor café area leaves LOTS to be desired.

This place is a gourmet cooks delight.
Ocean fresh seafood, gourmet groceries, exotic and high quality fresh foods and produce, even a very nice looking traiteur section and prepared foods by Europea.
I’m sorry, but this is not where you go to do your weekly grocery shopping (Unless of course you want champagne on a champagne budget. which is a possibility as this is Westmount afterall). This is where you go when you want to prepare a special dinner with the best possible ingredients. This is where you go when you are feeling a little blue and want to treat yourself to a nice homecooked/​pre-​made assembled meal to cook at home. To compare Provigo or Metro to this place would be like comparing Chevrolet to BMW; you just don’t.
Living nearby, I have been here occasionally since it re-​opened in the summer. The seafood section is small but very good; many varieties of fresh oysters (that they let you try btw), fresh fish, and huge hunks of tuna that are cut to order. They have a small but also very nice butcher style meats section with different cuts of aged steaks. My favorite is the prepared foods section where you can get things like truffled mac n cheese, different flavors of risotto balls, and many other yummy foods. The service is great, the displays are clean and beautiful, and despite everything I do not feel that it is over-​priced at all.
Ps, parking is free and is located underneath the building.

Une épicerie pour les foodies, c’est assez rare à Montréal, royaume du cheap et des bas prix! Tout est beau ici; les fleurs, les fruits, les légumes et surtout le comptoir des viandes. Le choix est super pour un si petit magasin et la qualité y est. En plus, il y a beaucoup d’employés au pouce carré!!!
Deux déceptions: les pâtisseries ont l’air très ordinaires et l’arrosage systématique des légumes. Personne né leur a dit que cela enlève les vitamines? Aucun intérêt de manger cela après!!!
L’été, la terrasse à l’extérieure semble invitante pour prendre un café le matin. À essayer pour leur café Illy!

The renovated store looks great, clean and the fresh, fish, meats and produce are displayed beautifully. The pre-​cooked food looks delicious. So why the low star count…2 reasons… over-​priced for the same or lesser products that are available for less money at other groceries such as Metro, IGA or Provigo. Everything seems to be at least 20% more costly here… sorry but thats just pure greed as far as I am concerned.
What I found even worse than the over-​pricing was the sneaky and intentional mis-​labelling of product. An example… I went to the fish counter and asked if they had organic salmon… the sales clerk behind the counter pointed to a tray with salmon fillets labelled. «Natural Scottish Salmon » …as anybody who has done any reading at all will know, the word «natural» in this instance has absolutely no meaning at all and certainly cannot be used in place of the word organic to denote an organic product. When I pointed out that if the fish met the criteria set out to be called «organic» then it should be labelled as organic and that the word «natural» cannot be substituted to mean organic. It is mislabelled. The clerk immeadiatly got arrogant and told me I was wrong, the fish was organic and that I could believe it or not.
This labelling of products as «natural» is a well– known ploy by restuarants and markets to try to get the consumer, especially the ill-​informed consumer to believe they are purchaseing something they are not. If the salmon in question was organic then they would have used the word organic… since they chose instead to use the word «natural» I can only believe that it was not organic and they were not being honest about it.
So buyer beware…

The place looks nice since the renovation with a nice outdoor seating area and sleek interior, but it does not justify the overpriced groceries that can be found in almost every other grocery store in the area for less.

Since it was originally founded and advertised as Les 5 Saisons since 1985, is it really new or just born again? I would say born again, as I remember it from the days before it closed in May of 2011. It was worth the wait of two plus years as this place is a spectacle of a grocery store. In fact in may be too nice to be called that and even market will not do it justice. How about fine food market place until I sort out another term. It definitely has layout and presentation in hand with their new open style concept and flow. Do not get me wrong it’s not just two large rooms of food. The space is carefully and intelligently laid out. Entering from Greene Avenue you have fresh flowers on the left, fruits and vegetables finely displayed and manicured on your right. Follow that along to the coffee, juice and pastry area. The cheese wall and the butchers counter are along the back wall. There is a giant prepared food island with prêt a manger hot and cold salad bar on the backside (a little hidden). A wall of single serving gourmet take-​away meals are kitty corner and then one of my favourites the seafood bar. One side has the raw fish and the other Cerviches, marinated and blended options. I had a container of marinated seafood with crackers for a light lunch at the end of my rounds. I completed said rounds by heading to the back more traditional looking room. Neatly placed rows of chilled, frozen and dry goods were well curated and looked more like an example of a step and repeat from a Hollywood red carpet walk. The prices of half the items I noticed were not all that high, but then again the other half were pretty much so. I will say I did debate spending $ 36/​lb on the nicest looking shelled lobster I had ever seen. My lunch was closer to $ 7 and still included large shrimp, scallops and calamari rings. Les 5 Saisons get one star per season that makes 5. I’ll be back lobster.

This place gets five stars almost by default. It is extremely clean, extremely well organized and impeccably presented!
If you like to shop for groceries while toting your Fendy clutch — this is the place to be.
Pricier than your average place! But hey — luxury ain’t cheap!